Admission Doesn't Lead To Betrayal

A Writer Who Worked With Pete Rose On A Previous Book Said He Was More Embarrassed.

January 6, 2004|By Roger Kahn, Special to the Los Angeles Times

The voice on the phone was friendly but determined. A baseball writer, and a good one, was talking. "Do you feel betrayed?" he asked as I groped about for alertness.

The night before, I had seen the thrilling Broadway production of Henry IV, and I thought, "Betrayed? Wait a minute. That's what Prince Hal does to his drinking buddy, Falstaff, when, after ascending the throne, he says, `I know thee not, old man. How ill white hairs become the fool and jester.' "

But the reporter and I were not talking Shakespeare or British monarchs. We were discussing a ballplayer, an all-star once at five positions, who suffers from certain deficiencies of character.

The hard news seems to be that after years, decades, of denial, Peter Edward Rose has made a confession of sorts to betting on baseball, although he says he never bet against himself or any team that he was managing. This presumably is spelled out in a book, My Prison Without Bars, which will be released Thursday. But to follow Shakespeare's approach in Henry IV, perhaps it would be best for me to start at the beginning.

Some time midway through the 1980s, Rose approached my agent through his company, Peter Edward Rose Enterprises Inc., and said he wanted me to write his story. I was not a virgin in the field of collaborative books, having composed something with Mickey Rooney in the early 1960s, which sank like a stone in a millpond.

Why does a reasonably idealistic writer get into collaborations with difficult people? Curiosity, I suppose, and bread. If you know a writer who does not need a healthy cash advance next Thursday, then you know one more writer than I.

At the time, I didn't care much for Rose. He was talented, but his talent was not in the same league as that of Willie Mays' or Joe DiMaggio's. He seemed able to talk only about himself, gambling, young women on the road -- a classically adolescent character. His speech was larded with obscenity and boastfulness. As opposed to, say, his teammate, Johnny Bench, he was oppressively vulgar.

But the cash was good, although not nearly as good as the first publisher, one Larry Kirshbaum of Warner Books, announced at a news conference. That was the first significant lie, that Rose and I were splitting a million dollars. We were producing for Warner the first million-dollar sports book! The ultimate contract specified $750,000, split two ways, which, subtracting the agent's commission and travel expenses, would leave me with about $300,000 for two or three years' work. Beats the poverty line, but come on, people. Nobody retires on numbers like that.

When I began work, I ran into a curious hostility. Rose seemed to think that he had finished his part of the job when he signed the contract.

"Could we go back to the old neighborhood together?"

"You know where it is. Find it for yourself."

"I want to talk to people close to you, your mother and your wife."

"Why do you want to do that?"

"I need some help here on details."

"You're supposed to be a good writer. Do your job."

And so it went. He kept his distance, as though he had something to hide.

"About gambling."

"I like the ponies. Everybody knows that."

We were sitting in the Cincinnati Reds' clubhouse on a March day.

"I'm glad the basketball season is running down," I said. "Now we'll have baseball."

"Basketball's great," Rose said. "Don't you bet the Final Four?"

Presently, he showed me his picks for that season's NCAA Tournament and then dispatched a clubhouse attendant to place his bets with a Tampa bookie.

"You sure you don't wanna bet my picks?" he said.

Cards, lotteries, casual gambling are common in clubhouses, but I never had before seen a man in uniform make a sports bet out of a dressing room.

"Should you be doing this?" I said.

"Yeah," Rose said. "Everybody does."

That was a second significant lie, although here he was mostly lying to himself.

An investigation into Rose's alleged gambling began under Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. Essentially, Rose was exonerated on the issue of sports betting.

When Bart Giamatti succeeded Ueberroth, he turned to his friend and lawyer, Fay Vincent, to reopen the Rose issue. From that point on, nobody -- Giamatti, Vincent, Rose (or, for that matter, myself) -- consistently covered himself with glory.

Giamatti was a scholar, a medievalist and a spirited companion. His sort of athlete was quarterback Frank Ryan who, while leading the Cleveland Browns to an NFL championship, earned a doctorate in the abstract field of topology. Ryan and Giamatti taught together at Yale, and I knew of no finer evening mix than Frank and Bart and martinis.